Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
Milosz is one of the poets who most speaks to me, and in the last year or two, diving into his huge oeuvre, I've come up again and again, breathless at his clarity, his humility, his directness in speaking about the human condition. And because of his very long life and relatively good health that allowed him to continue to write, he had many years to consider his mortality, as well as his oft-explored themes of sensual pleasure and personal happiness amid a continual awareness of the world's suffering, and his struggles to understand God and his own battered faith.
Just now I looked briefly through his New and Collected Poems for something appropriate on this day - which almost any poem of his would be. There was too much choice. Here is one - a longish poem he wrote on the occasion of turning seventy, twenty-three years ago.
POET AT SEVENTY
Thus, brother theologian, here you are. Connoisseur of heavens and abysses, Year after year perfecting your art, Choosing bookish wisdom for your mistress, Only to discover you wander in the dark.
Ai, humiliated to the bone By tricks that crafty reason plays, You searched for peace in human homes But they, like sailboats, glide away, Their goal and port, alas, unknown.
You sit in taverns drinking wine, Pleased by the hubbub and the din, Voices grow loud and then decline As if played out by a machine And you accept your quarantine.
On this sad earth no time to grieve, Love potions every spring are brewing, Your heart, in magic, finds relief, Though Lenten dirges cut your cooing. And thus you learn how to forgive.
Voracious, frivolous, and dazed As if your time were without end You run around and loudly praise Theatrum where the flesh pretends To win the game of nights and days.
In plumes and scales to fly and crawl, Put on mascara, fluffy dresses, Attempt to play like beast and fowl, Forgetting interstellar spaces: Try, my philosopher, the world.
And all your wisdom came to nothing Though many years you worked and strived With only one reward and trophy: your happiness to be alive And sorrow that your life is closing.
Not willing to stop reading his words, I continued leafing through the book, and near the end I found this, which brought me to tears:
PRAYER
Approaching ninety, and still with a hope That I could tell it, say it, blurt it out.
If not before people, at least before You, Who nourished me with honey and wormwood.
I am ashamed, for I must believe you protected me, As if I had for You some pearticular merit.
I was like those in the gulags who fashioned a cross from twigs And prayed to it at night in the barraks.
I made a plea and You deigned to answer it, So that I could see how unreasonable it was.
But when out of pity for others I begged a miracle, The sky and the earth were silent, as always.
Morally suspect becasue of my belief in You, I admired unbelievers for their simple persistence.
What sort of adorer of Majesty am I, If I consider religion good only for the weak like myself?
The least-normal person in Father Chomski's class, I had already fixed my sights on the swirling vortex of a destiny.
Now You are closing down my five sense, slowly, And I am an old man lying in darkness.
Delivered to that thing which has oppressed me So that I always ran forward, composing poems.
Liberate me from guilt, real and imagined. Give me certainty that I toiled for Your glory.
In the hour of the agony of death, help me with Your suffering Which cannot save the world from pain.
I agree with elck, in his comments on the last post, that America's big cities abound in cultural opportunities, and that of those, the visual arts are often the most accessible and affordable. I also agree that in the academy, arts education is excellent - but especially once you're out of the city, academic taste often becomes rarified and distant from local cultures, with the university acting as arbiter of what is "good" art in all sorts of ways, from hosting and jurying art shows to lending its "poets" for local readings, always on a "higher" level than people who come up from, and express, the grass roots. I have a big problem with that.
We started out with Marja-Leena's comment that in Canada, she felt the visual arts were less well funded than other forms, and visual arts education less than adequate. My contention is that in America, there is a certain appreciation for the visual arts - I think we are a pretty visually-oriented culture - and most kids do receive some visual arts education. But I'd never say that the culture at large supports, or understands, or has a language for, or is comfortable with, painting, photography, and sculpture, especially the contemporary versions of these. I've spent my life in the visual arts and in communicating (or trying to) about visual art and design with other people. On the non-professional side, I did one stint as board member of a local arts organization during the years when we were starting an arts education program for adults and children. I was on that education committee for seven years. The program has been a rousing success, but this is in a region with a lot of sophisticated, educated people who aren't afraid of art. There has also been a tireless director who has worked with local schools to identify gifted children and give them the opportunity for further study, funded by scholarships that she has funded through grants and local business connections. There are also programs for seniors. This kind of thing takes a huge amount of dedication and work, but it is wonderful when it happens and endures.
On the other hand, my rural public school, in unsophisticated farm country, had one of the best music programs in the state of New York, largely due to the efforts of two totally dedicated teachers - the band and choir directors - who taught every kid in that school system to read music and love it. That was thirty and forty years ago. To this day, there are poor families in that area who make sure their kids play in the band or who, as adults, still play in the little local community bands themselves or take part in local theater productions. There was also a thriving visual arts society because one woman made it her life's work - and these three people all had a huge effect on my life. That school system was an example of local people deciding that music was just as important as football. When you have a hundred kids who've learned about the lives of composers, and played music from Bach to Bernstein, and gone back and talked to their families about it after dairy barn chores, it tends to bring the adults along and change the pooh-poohing, which is a product of the fear of being found ignorant, to acceptance. All those families used to show up for concerts and parades; maybe they still liked the Sousa marches better than Gustav Holst, but they came. Looking back, I see how remarkable this was and how it had a lasting effect on a lot of people.
What it takes is often not so much money, but heart and dedication, and gifted communicators. We say that only the rich or well-educated appreciate art in our society, but I think we can do a lot to change that by getting out in the community and making art real, and showing that artists are real - that living an artist's life is worthwhile and important even though it is difficult. Modern society has a real tendency to shift the responsibility for everything onto government, and then blame it for all the failures. While I deplore the cutbacks in arts funding, and, even more, deplore the fact that we are spending money on bombs rather than programs that benefit people, local people and communities can insist that the arts are important - and one articulate or energetic person can actually make a big difference. I agree, though, that the tendency in our culture is in an opposite direction and that fighting this fight is increasingly difficult. Yet we are talking about a basic need and hunger that people have, even more so in an environment that is suffused with fear, anxiety, and hopelessness.
In the comments on last night's post, Marja-Leena wrote this about Canada:
I think that many people have difficulty understanding visual arts, particularly contemporary art, and I blame our deficient-in-art education system partly for that. Generally speaking Europeans seem better educated and more interested in it, and they have all those wonderful museums too. Music-based performing arts has always been part of life and does not seem so challenging to enjoy, don't you think? How do you find this compares to the US? The big cities have many wonderful museums having a greater population and wealth to support them. Are they well attended?
I wonder if others would like to comment. How does appreciation of the various arts vary across the US?
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Ernesto's recent posts at Never Neutral have moved me, especially his musings about the difficulties of being a writer in a society that doesn't feel supportive of literature or writing, that doesn't, in his words, read. Although I've written about the shock and delight of seeing Montrealers reading on the metro, on buses, in the parks, and even walking, I really don't know enough about the society yet to know if it loves literature and writers. According to Marja-Leena, Canada does support its artists, and a large percentage of the annual arts budget goes to writers. How that translates into everyday reality I have yet to discover, and as a non-Canadian I won't be able to benefit from it except indirectly - but indirect is good too.
Coming back and forth, as we are now doing, forces one to see differences and similarities, and it's also forcing some stark reassessments of priorities. The early indications I had, back in May, that this big old house might prove to be more of a burden than blessing have certainly proved to be true. My growing awareness that what I want to do most is take care of myself, my marriage, my primary relationships, and write, has forced me to notice all the other things that I've gotten enmeshed in, or that I've used to fill up perceived gaps, distract myself, or avoid boredom and even commitment. I don't feel guilty about that, or ashamed, but I'm glad to be figuring it out. I'm also glad to be able to see that our societal bias toward more being the path to happiness and liberation is, for me, just the opposite: a trap that ensnares and limits me and my already limited energy. I want less: less space, fewer possessions, fewer obligations, a lighter step, more freedom of movement and spirit. I'm figuring out that what I really need from the material world is a bed, a place to cook and to wash, and a mental space that is as free as possible for contemplation and creative thinking - although, having been there at earlier points in my life, I know how difficult it can be to be creative when one is worrying constantly about money.
Writing is...what I need to do. It's almost involuntary. It almost doesn't matter if anyone reads it: I kept a private journal for years and years before ever beginning to blog. We have this affliction, writers do, and like Jacob, wounded in the thigh from wrestling with the angel, forever afterwards we limp, but we can't go back to the way we were before we saw ourselves as writers.
On Sunday we rode our bikes to the Jean-Talon market - a revelation. We've been to this vast semi-open-air farmer's market many times, but always by car. It seemed as if it would take forever to get there by bike, but no - maybe twenty minutes, and we were there. We spent about two hours browsing on the visual feast, and then rode home.
Now we're back in Vermont. I spent the morning interviewing Doug Theuner, the former bishop of New Hampshire, and have two more interviews scheduled for Thursday, so that project is proceeding. I'm finding the transition between the two homes and lives quite difficult, though, and am hoping it will get easier.
And I am so far behind on writing here! There are more stories from the trip last week across New York State, and a moral fable from Montreal, and impressions of three films: Fahrenheit 911, Maria Full of Grace, and Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring. So stay tuned.
